Thursday, April 28, 2016

7:51 PM

Dem U.S. Senate candidate Russ Feingold said today there's "no big hurry" for Bernie Sanders to drop out of the 2016 Dem primaries.

Feingold told reporters after a WisPolitics.com luncheon in Madison that Sanders will "do the right thing when the time is right." But the Middleton Dem declined to say whether Hillary Clinton is the presumptive nominee, saying "the people will decide."

He once again refused to say who he voted for in the primaries this month, saying he didn't even tell his wife. And he said he's still holding off on an endorsement because he wants the "process to play out."

"I think it's harmful to do something that would cause divisions when I could try to bring people together," Feingold said.

But he credited Sanders for the amount of enthusiasm his campaign has seen, especially from young people who are getting involved in politics.

"What he's doing is great," Feingold said. "He helped make Hillary Clinton a better candidate, and what he did on his own, raised issues that frankly I've been raising for decades that needed to be raised about the power of big money in politics and the predominance of Wall Street."

At the luncheon, Feingold also slammed Donald Trump's foreign policy speech, saying it often "didn't make sense."

Yet given his standing as the GOP front-runner, Feingold said, the public has to start "really listening to what he's saying, even though it can be confusing at times."

Trump yesterday laid out his foreign policy planks in a Washington address, providing few details but saying he would put "America First." One example, Trump said, is calling together a NATO summit so the U.S. allies can start paying more toward the alliance.

If that doesn't happen, Trump said, the U.S. "must be prepared to let these countries defend themselves."

But Feingold said NATO has been a "valuable bulwark" against the Soviet Union and Russia. Though there might be room for changes, Feingold said, Trump can't go around saying America needs to show the world "that we have their back" and then threaten to leave alliances.

"That doesn't really work," Feingold said. "So we're going to be listening carefully to what he has to say."